Dorothy Sayers: Why Work?

This is one of the most helpful articles on work that I’ve read. Keller and many others refer to it often as well.

And, we still need to fulfill the challenge she lays down in it. She says at one point “the Christian church desperately needs a theology of work.” We’ve been doing better in the last ten years (some fantastic efforts are listed below), but don’t let the existence of some great new books on this fool you. We still have a long way to go in actually working this these truths into our hearts and lives.

Here’s one of the best quotes from Sayers’ essay:

It is not right for the Church to acquiesce in the notion that a man’s life is divided into the time he spends on his work and the time he spends in serving God. He must be able to serve God in his work, and the work itself must be accepted and respected as the medium of divine creation.”

Here are some of the best books that have begun to give us a much better, articulate, and biblically grounded doctrine of work in recent days:

Related

I graduated from Calvin College in Michigan. There they take to heart the words of Dutch prime minister Abraham Kuyper that every square inch of the universe belongs to God. Thus everything we do pertains to God’s stuff and is therefor important to God that we do all things well. The 4th commandment is not only to rest and worship on the sabbath. It’s also to work on the other 6 days. I’m sure if you look you will find links to plenty of theology on the subject at Calvin.edu.